“Fear and catastrophe fortify the need to identify with a strong leader. They lead to herding together of people, who shy away from wanting to be individual cells any longer; they prefer to be part of a huge mystic social organization that protects against threat and distress, in oneness with the leader. This protection-seeking instinctual reaction is also directed against dissent and individualism, against the individual ego. We see in this a regression toward a more primitive state of mass participation. (Meerloo, 1961, p. 127)
The above quote, in many ways, exemplifies what is happening in America today. There are two political parties clinging to the narrative of their chosen brand without giving much thought to anything else going on around them. There is little room for disagreement within the strict confines of popular opinion governing these narratives. Often times, any original thought challenging the perceptions of people clinging to these opinions and beliefs, results in ridicule. People questioning the Trump narrative, for example, are referred to as liberal hacks, Never-Trumpers, or even in some cases — a milksop patriot. Opinions that do not support the mainstream idea are automatically rejected. There is more truth in the above quote than people realize. America has been brought to the brink of destruction. Everything we thought we knew and believed in has been turned upside down by liberalism run rampant. There is a fear that has gripped the psyche of the American public. Both sides of the political aisle fear the ambitions and beliefs of the opposite side. The left believes Trump is a fascist, but to the right, he is a savior. Trump was elected after eight years of Barrack Obama driving his destructive — fundamental transformation choo – choo train — through our country. The prospect we faced afterwards was more of the same, or a man we didn’t really know. There was such a sense of relief that washed over the public after the 2016 election. People were so ecstatic that Trump had defeated Hillary Clinton, that pretty much everything he said was accepted without any question at all. Since then, everything Trump does is presented as a genius move of sorts, leading to terms like four-D chess, being used to describe them. Is Trump really a great conservative icon destined to save the country? Or is this just a popular perception resulting from the sense of relief felt knowing we diverted a disaster? Within the literature on persuasion and compliance gaining there is a technique known as fear-then-relief. Could the unquestioning support Trump enjoys from the MAGA movement be the result of this technique, and what is known about the human response to fear?
Fear-then-relief – “This is somewhat different from other techniques in that the persuader deliberately places the recipient in a state of fear. Suddenly and abruptly, the persuader eliminates the threat, replaces fear with kind words, and asks the recipient to comply with a request. The ensuing relief pushes the persuade to acquiesce.” (Perloff, Dynamics of Persuasion, p. 464)
For decades, social scientists and behavioral specialists have been studying the effects of fear on the human psyche. To be more specific, how fear works in gaining compliance. Many of these studies took place within the darkness of Nazi and Soviet prison camps (Dolinski & Nawart, 1998). Interrogators would beat and threaten prisoners to the point of exhaustion in an attempt to gain confessions. Suddenly, out of nowhere, these beatings would stop, and the interrogators would take on a nicer and more compassionate demeanor. At which point, according to Dolinski and Nawart (1998), prisoners would let the confessions fly. This laid the groundwork for future studies into fear and how to use it as a weapon. While it was once believed that fear itself was the primary emotion that led to compliance, it is the removal of that fear, and the relief that ensues, that induces people to comply with requests that may follow. It is believed that fear leads to what Dolinski & Nawart (1998) call a lack of cognitive resources. Citing Darwin’s theory (p. 47), they say that a state of fear depletes a person’s awareness of everything going on around them because they are heavily focused on dealing with the fear stimulus as a survival mechanism. When this heightened state of awareness is relaxed, it is believed that the ensuing relief, and a state of mind already experiencing a lack of cognitive functioning, puts people in a state of mindlessness where they are acting automatically — making them more willing to comply with anything (Dolinski & Nawart, 1998).
“We are suggesting, however, that in the relief state human behavior is nonreflective to a much greater extent due to cognitive exhaustion, lack of concentration on an external environment, and cancellation of a state of emergency. We assume that that all these factors, taken together, lead to a temporary state of mindlessness characterized by automatic reactions to external stimuli.” (Dolinski & Nawart, 1998).
The lack of cognitive resources is also cited in another article entitled Fear-Then-Relief, Mindlessness and Cognitive Deficits. The authors of this study, however, offer different — theoretical — explanations of the mindlessness that follows the removal of a fear stimulus. For example, they state a person may automatically engage in what they call, retroactive thinking, depleting their capacity to consider what is happening around them (p. 446) This means that they are trapped in the “what ifs of possibilities” as opposed to the reality they are currently in once a fear stimulus is removed. Another possibility is that the system is working in overdrive to recover its balance (p. 446). This means that the system is potentially working to calm itself down, and all of the cognitive resources available are working towards this aim, creating the temporary mindlessness that results from the abrupt removal of a fear stimulus. While these are possible explanations as to why people become more compliant after a fear is removed, it is generally accepted that people do, in fact, become mindless and more compliant in this brief period of time. Both papers acknowledge the need for further study.
The words, lack of cognitive resources, could be explained in simpler terms. For example, the book Invasion from Mars: The Study of the Psychology of Panic, which is a detailed study concerning the panicked reactions of the population to Orson Welles’s 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds, mentions something strikingly similar. Aside from an inherent trust in media figures, it was found because people, in a state of fear, have difficulty processing information correctly, they don’t know how to respond to a fear-based stimulus. There is nothing in their memories or lived experience which they can draw on as a comparison to the events taking place around them, so there is no frame of reference. This undoubtedly increases the level of arousal experienced in response to the fear-based stimulus. Potentially contributing to feelings of elation and a relaxed sense of awareness once the fear is removed. Think about this in terms of Covid-19, September 11, or even the recent threat of nuclear war with Iran. People have no frame of reference to these events. Nobody has experienced a pandemic the way Covid-19 was being presented to the public. The fear, for many people, was gripping in the sense that all of their mental resources were directed towards keeping themselves and their families safe from something they had no ability to understand. The information, or rather the propaganda, was coming at us so hard that the recommended courses of action from the government eased these fears, pushing people into a mindless state of compliance. The same could be said about September 11, 2001. The initial attack was soon followed up by threats of Anthrax in the mail, if you remember. The fear of a terrorist waiting in the shadows was so mind consuming, no one questioned the passage of The Patriot Act, or why we went to war with Iraq. Who had nothing to do with September 11, incidentally. This raises many questions. The study of fear and its effects on the mind have been going on for decades. This is what Joost Meerloo meant when he said in his book, The Rape of the Mind (p.67), (and I am paraphrasing) that at this very moment, elaborate research is being conducted to see what it takes to overcome the psychological barriers of resistance of the buying public. What does this mean? It means that behavior specialists, communications engineers and propagandists are studying what it takes to gain mindless compliance from the American people. What makes them automatically react in a way conducive to the aims of another?
Is it possible that the fear-then-relief technique can be applied to society as a whole? Is it a possible explanation as to why people cling so tightly to their respective political parties, and place their leaders on the pedestal of unquestionableness? Could Donald Trump’s status as a great conservative president, who continually bamboozles the left and puts them in their place, be nothing more than the result of this technique? These are heavy handed questions, however, there is little doubt that these studies do extend to society as a whole, and that the results of chaos and hopelessness also lead to the same type of response from the public as they do the individual. For example, a book entitled Media, Persuasion, and Propaganda, (p.2) states what scientists know about cognitive overload. It depletes self-control and makes us easier to manipulate. Think about that statement in reference to the articles mentioned earlier. Depleting self-control, for example, is the same as saying that fear leads to a lack of cognitive resources, making it difficult for us to process information. Meerloo (p. 93) refers to something he calls the totalitarian strategy of no political rest. While he does say this is a milder form of mass terror, it involves the continual barrage of propaganda meant to keep the public consciousness trapped on whatever our political masterminds want us focused on. Continual mass shootings, fear of another war, constant debt and rising prices, corruption, the battle between political ideologies. Whoever promises to resolve these problems is sure to win the minds of the voting public to some degree. Go back to 2016 a moment. The fear of a Hillary Clinton presidency, after eight years of Obama, was surely weighing heavily on the minds of American conservatives. Donald Trump, a man people knew little about, was viewed as a fresh and new alternative to the same old type of GOP candidate, and people were willing to take a chance on him.
Consider this last quote from Joost Meerloo, and compare it to the one below from Rules for Radicals. “The demagogue who is able to provide such static release in the masses can be sure of their yielding to his influence and power.” (Meerloo, 1961, p. 36) What does that mean? It means his promises to make everything better is a sigh of relief for the people whose minds are trapped in a state of fear of what the future may bring, should the other side win.
There’s another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be proceeded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, and so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. (Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, 1971)
